Steffy: Energy industry thin-skinned to criticism

Updated 7:40 pm, Thursday, May 3, 2012

The Offshore Technology Conference is like a big choir with a rotating roster of preachers. Few sour notes are heard.

Two years after the worst offshore disaster in U.S. history, discussions of safety, ethics and politics were steeped in insider perspective. Views, apparently, are valid only if they come with industry credentials.

The conference, which concluded Thursday, included what was billed as a talk about U.S. energy policy by U.S. Rep. Bill Flores, R-Waco. It turned out to be little more than a political stump speech. Flores, one of the lowest-ranking members of the House Natural Resources Committee, touted his connection to the industry before launching into a crowd-pleasing harangue against the Obama administration.

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"For about 30 years, I was on your side of the podium," he said, referring to his time as an energy company executive. "I'm very well aware of what the government can do to your business."

He went on to complain that most members of Congress have never worked in the oil business, adding that "we are way underexposed in Congress."

Earlier in the week, a panel dubbed as an "ethics breakfast" was composed of a representative from the American Petroleum Institute and an adjunct professor at Rice University who, the introduction noted, is first and foremost a geoscientist.

While the ethics discussion mentioned industry shortcomings in the response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, much of it focused on the media, the government, and - a repeated theme in many of the discussions - a lack of public understanding about the challenges the industry faces.

Disdain for public

The us-against-them syndrome pervades much of the discussion at OTC, and it feeds the insular culture in which the industry wraps itself. Spend four full days at the conference and you can sense the industry's disdain for a public it feels doesn't appreciate it. A question after one of the presentations led with the statement that "the American people are dumb."

I'm frequently asked by people in the energy industry why the public has such a dislike for companies that provide such a vital resource. The answer is complex, but part of it is the way the industry tends to look down on the ultimate end-users of its product.

The general public may have a poor understanding of the complexity and need for energy, but the energy industry has a poor understanding of the public as well.

Other views buried

A trade show, of course, isn't the place to find deep introspection.

As someone told me early in the week, everyone's selling something at OTC. But OTC itself sells, or at least reinforces, the industry's own view of itself. Panels on the future demand for oil - the prediction is it will continue to rise - are featured prominently and are well attended. A few panels that might bring diverse views are buried in the afternoon sessions.

Nevertheless, a few panels did provide more candid discussions. One discussion on risk management, for example, included comments from Talisman Energy Vice President Kevin Lacy, who said offshore companies need to better understand and prepare for accidents such as the Macondo blowout that have a low risk of occurring, but come with big consequences.

"We normally think as humans, and certainly in the drilling industry that a well-control (problem) or blowout is bad luck, it's a one off," Lacy said. "It's not. I don't believe an event can be rare if the fundamentals have been violated preceding it."

Such candor, though, was uncommon among the discussions. The only session devoted to alternative fuels was late in the final day, when many attendees had already left.

For all its size and power, the energy industry remains remarkably thin-skinned to criticism and dismissive of diverging opinions. OTC is an annual reminder of that, as thousands of the faithful flock to Houston and any discouraging words are drowned out by the choir's same songs.

Loren Steffy, loren.steffy@chron.com, is the Chronicle's business columnist.